67’s weekly: flush it
Ottawa 67’s defenceman Josh Brady was in a chipper mood Friday night, beating his childhood friend Masen Johnston over the shoulder for the game-winning goal against the Peterborough Petes.
For the Peterborough native, it was a surreal feeling for his third career OHL goal.
“I grew up with Masen, and we’re pretty good friends,” Brady said after the game. “He’s from Peterborough, as well, so I’m probably going to shoot him a text.”
“It was awesome. I grew up watching them and ended up scoring against them, so it was pretty cool.”
Moments like those make the OHL such a special place, and it’s hard not to feel good for a kid when they are rewarded for their hard work.
“That was great,” said 67’s Assistant Coach Norm Milley. “It couldn’t have come at a better time for him, he works so hard. You want every kid to score those big goals, and you know they put in such good effort, on and off the ice. They are good kids, they work hard in school, and they work hard in practice.”
The wide smile plastered across Brady’s face reflected not only his individual achievement but also the team’s intestinal fortitude to battle their way back into the game after going down 2-0 in the first period.
“I thought we did a lot of good things,” Milley said. “We gave up a couple of big chances early, and we got behind, but I thought we did a great job coming back. We stuck with it. We had some good offensive zone time, we stuck to our system, and we found a way to win.”
Sunday wasn’t quite as jovial for the Barber Poles, falling 10-3 to the London Knights, the league’s top seed. Milley says there are positives to come out of it, mostly pertaining to their five-on-five game, which he described as being “right there with them,” but it was the definition of a burn-the-tapes game for the 67’s.
“It’s one of those games you just throw in the garbage,” Milley said. “It’s gone, it happens to everybody. You can’t really explain it, but it happens. We’ll move away from that, and understand that things like that do happen, but it can’t affect us long-term. Let’s just scrap it and keep working to get better.”
Though it’s quite comical to envision Milley and the rest of the coaching staff out back of TD Place with flame throwers burning physical tapes, it doesn’t happen that way. The coaches still have that video, and they will review it, but it won’t necessarily be something they’re using the rest of the way.
“We thought about [actually burning] it, but we still did a lot of good things,” Milley said, referencing what he calls keepers, where they hold the opposition from moving forward on their attack quickly. “We took some things from it, but we didn’t take a whole lot to show and teach. Burn the tape is the right idea.”
Prolific in his time in junior hockey between 1996 and 2000, Milley knows just as well as anyone that things don’t always go right, and you just have to battle through it.
“That doesn’t show who we are,” he said. “I remember games I played where you lose and there’s nothing you can really do. There’ll be a chip-in, the puck will take a weird bounce and go in the net, or you just get unlucky, and then it just kind of snowballs. There’s not much you can do in those games.”
Zeroing in on their Wednesday night game with the Oshawa Generals at the Tribute Communities Centre has given the Barber Poles something else to focus on, helping to further flush the nightmarish experience on Sunday.
“I think we’re already past that London game, everybody has forgotten about it,” Milley said. “Going into Oshawa, we know what type of team they are; they play hard. It’s going to be a challenge for us.”
“We have to play 60 minutes, we have to play detailed, and we have to have patience. We can’t go up and down the rink with them, they’ll out-skill us.”
The 67’s are hoping for some more offence beginning on Wednesday, as well. Goals have been tough to come by for Ottawa, scoring eight in their past three games, including an empty-netter against Peterborough.
For many, they’ve hit a slump together, but have still managed to scrape together four points in their past five games.
“It’s bad timing to all be going through that snake bite together,” Milley explained. “But when we do catch fire, look out. As a player, it’s tough to change your game when you’re going through a snake-bitten stretch, but if you’re generating some chances, it’s coming, it will happen.”
